Regarding the evident desire of Jewish organizations and Jewish intellectuals to keep admitting anti-Jewish Muslims into America, one of our regular contributors writes: “What we are witnessing is the gene that makes moths fly into candle flames, but in its human form—a form which must have the exact same nucleotide sequence as in the moth, because clearly it’s the exact same gene.”

As the writer suggests, a group phenomenon that seems to defy any rational explanation may be more explicable in terms of instinct. In this case, it seems to be the instinct to weaken a potentially anti-Semitic national majority by diversifying the nation, an instinct which may have served Jews in the past, or at least made sense in the abstract, but which under current circumstances—in America, the most philo-Semitic nation in the history of the world—is plainly suicidal. The sad truth is that once a collective thought pattern becomes established, it takes on a life of its own and becomes immune to reason.

This element of the Jewish psyche is further illuminated by Norman Podhoretz in his self-trumpeting memoir, My Love Affair with America:

[M]y own view is that what had befallen the Jews of Europe inculcated a subliminal lesson… . The lesson was that anti-Semitism, even the relatively harmless genteel variety that enforced quotas against Jewish students or kept their parents from joining fashionable clubs or getting jobs in prestigious Wall Street law firms, could end in mass murder. (p. 148.)

While the view Podhoretz expresses here is familiar, coming from a leading Jewish spokesman it nevertheless strikes me as extraordinary. For years, traditionalist conservatives and nationalists (including some Jews) have moaned that “any criticism of the Jews is equated with Auschwitz.” While containing an element of truth, the complaint has always seemed somewhat hyperbolic. But now (to the extent that Podhoretz accurately reflects Jewish attitudes) it turns out that that’s exactly what the mainstream Jewish community has really thought all along. In their minds, any desire on the part of Gentiles to maintain an all-Gentile country club, or any statement, no matter how mild and civilized, that shows any concern about any aspects of the cultural and political influence of Jews in American life, is seen as leading potentially to Auschwitz, and must therefore be ruthlessly condemned and suppressed. The previous statement should not be taken to suggest, as more than a few of today’s anti-Semites suggest, that all concerns about anti-Semitism are nothing more than political correctness; there most certainly is real, and not just imaginary, anti-Semitism in America. But there is also a definite tendency on the part of Jewish spokesman to lump virtually any rational criticism of Jews, or any normal manifestations of Gentile ethno-centrism, with anti-Semitism.

The significance of this belief in relation to the immigration issue is made clear by another passage from My Love Affair With America:

Acting on the principle that “all bigotry is indivisible,” Jewish organizations such as the American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League, whose purpose was to defend Jews against discrimination and defamation, joined enthusiastically in the civil-rights movement, of which individual Jews were for a long time leaders and funders. (p. 153.)

The liberal notion that “all bigotry is indivisible” implies that all manifestations of ingroup/outgroup feeling (if we’re speaking about the feelings of Gentiles, that is) are essentially the same—and equally wrong. It denies the obvious fact that some outgroups are more different from the ingroup, and hence less assimilable, and hence more legitimately excluded, than other outgroups. It means, for example, that wanting to exclude Muslim immigrants from America is as blameworthy as wanting to exclude Catholics or Jews.

Now when Jews put together the idea that “any social prejudice or exclusion directed against Jews leads potentially to Auschwitz” with the idea that “all bigotry is indivisible,” they must reach the conclusion that any exclusion of any group, no matter how alien it may be to the host society, is a potential Auschwitz.

So there it is. We have identified the core Jewish conviction that makes Jews keep pushing relentlessly for mass immigration, even the mass immigration of their deadliest enemies. In the thought-process of Jews, to keep Jew-hating Muslims out of America would feed exclusionary attitudes among America’s white Gentile majority that could result in another Jewish Holocaust.

What we have here an exapmle that shows why far too many neocon Jews believe that liberal universalism is the guaranteer of thier rights.

It is a gut instinct borne of centuries of oppression, not logical discourse. It should be treated as a neurosis not as a logical political belief.

Posted by: Ron on December 10, 2002 1:29 AM

Very interesting observation. It seems that Israeli Jews, most of whom are immigrants from elsewhere, don’t share their American cousins’ enthusiasm about bringing the third world into the neighborhood. American Jews are likewise not very keen on the idea of a Palestinian “right of return”, for example. There are a few American conservative Jews (Don Feder comes to mind) who recognize the problem. With FontpageMag’s increased coverage of border issues, I think David Horowitz is beginning to question suicidal immigration policies as well.

Posted by: Carl on December 10, 2002 2:13 AM

Speaking of politically correct, what’s this forum’s take on the whole Trent Lott/Strom Thurmond affair?

Posted by: Alex Sleighback on December 10, 2002 4:13 PM

Alex, my take on it is that what’s going to happen to Lott is the exact same thing that happened to Harry Stein and Bob McTeer,* only worse: he’s going to be Borked, BIG-TIME … and perhaps forced to resign.

I’ll add that if Trent Lott winds up politically overpowered, I won’t shed a river of tears over him — he’s WAY TOO testosterone-challenged for my taste. Never forget, he’s the one who made it so that the House Monitors (is that what they were called?), arguing for Clinton’s conviction in the impeachment trial before the Senate, were never given a serious hearing. Trent Lott is the reason Clinton wasn’t convicted and remained in office, national disgrace that he was. Lott’s a weak, despicable human being who puts personal comfort above principle and feeble compromise with the left above right reason.

Now I have a question: I heard Al Gore talking about this Lott-Thurmond affair today, and what’s with that homosexual accent and intonation he puts on? I mean, it’s even more blatant now than during the 2000 campaign when Steve Sailer commented on it. Is that a way to cultivate the homosexual vote for his next campaign, or what? Is he a closeted homosexual? What gives with that? It’s absolutely creepy to hear.

(* Second blog entry down under Dec. 9th, posted by Jim Kalb)

Posted by: Unadorned on December 10, 2002 6:38 PM

Actually, Unadorned, I always thought Al Gore was a great example of what can be done with modern taxidermy and animatronics.

Posted by: Carl on December 10, 2002 7:45 PM

I think you’re right about what will happen to Lott. The left will never let it go, and the Bush administration will likely see him as a big liability. Not that I would be sorry to see him go, with all the selling out he’s done.

Posted by: Carl on December 10, 2002 7:48 PM

Larry Auster mentions: “the sad truth is that once a collective thought pattern becomes established, it takes on a life of its own and becomes immune to reason” .His is an accurate observation about cultural discussions in general and sociological issues in particular.
But such topics and current conclusions
concerning these are are not universal, scientific and unchangeable.Events overtake the discussion and modify its parameters- some are unnoticed for a time but eventually work their way into and modify the discussion and the realpolitic…
Prior to WWII antisemitism ran unchecked in most places, multiculturalism was little heard of and the Holcaust had not occurred.
After WWII the ACLU started its attack on American culture,the parts that are unprotected under law (what we call social mores) forcing us from a more-or-less homogeneous society toward total heterogeneity.
The American media also became unduly attracted to liberalism,and embraced “controversy news ” as a tool to sell paper and products.
In the 1970-2000 time period Trillions of Petro dollars in Saudi-arab hands had funded the world-wide spread of Moslem global religious terror( the new Christian-Jewish holocaust), and a new global cultural worse than the communist one recently ended.
Today Israel is the frontline in the war on terrorism and Jews are highly respected contributing members of American society.

Change is inevitable.In the political history of the earth, the odds are against longterm continuation of this this 225 year old experiment we call American democracy.

Now is the time for all good men to……..

Posted by: Sandy on December 10, 2002 9:10 PM

While the Nazi Holocaust is now the talisman of self-identity for American Jews, as for Jews elsewhere (largely due to loss of Jewish faith), it should be noted that the Jewish position on immigration to the United States (as expressed by such as the AJC, ADL and B’nai Brith) long predates the Second World War. The Holocaust and the belief that America’s evil WASP establishment conspired to abandon European Jewry to Nazis strengthened Jewish commitment to open immigration, to be sure. Nevertheless, the same organizations that lobbied so hard and so successfully for the disastrous immigration “reforms” of 1965 were the same ones that lobbied against the long overdue reforms of 1924.

The motives were a desire to weaken the American establishment, to make a more heterogeneous America in which Jews would be less conspicuous and presumably safer, and to hold the country open as a refuge for other Jews who might need to flee unfriendly regimes. Their success at the first and last is unquestionable. They would seem to be successful at the second as well, although immigration might change that. HRS

Posted by: Howard Sutherland on December 17, 2002 1:51 PM

As a frank, intelligent and honest Jewish guy does Lawrence Auster have any answers to the question of why characters like Norman Podhoretz can hold such ludicrous views that Jews in America (or Britain) are constantly “at risk” of being “taken to Auschwitz” and yet appear to be the most powerful and mainstream Jewish spokesman? Podhoretz appears to be the kind of guy the mass media moguls and the Marc Rich’s and Gutnick’s of this world relate to.

Why do P&Co appear to have such little understanding in the workings of a society like the US or Britain that this can viewpoint can be put forward with any degree of seriousness? Why are they not laughed out of court?

Why are they such strangers to criticism of themselves that any questioning of the nature of Jewish power and its consequences for the US is met with shrill abuse and what looks to an outsider remarkably like paranoia?

It is not that they can’t hand it out but they just can’t take it. I think the word for that is “hypocrite” or if you want two words, how about maintaining a “double standard”

Or do the Podhoretz’s of this world understand all too well and wish cynically to shout “holocaust” and “anti-Semitism” at anyone or anybody challenging their protective coating of Podhoretzian “infallibility”? What criticism would NOT qualify as “anti-Semitism” to them?
Is it possible to sustain a single instance of any specific criticism of some aspect of organised Jewry of the type that Norman Podhoretz represent and not be accused of the “anti-Semitic” thought crime?

Have the powerful organised Jewish lobby become so immune to criticism that they now have an “antibody” reaction where their “white corpuscle” army crowds around and swallows the offender whole? Sobran, Francis, Gottfried (maybe Auster) and on the left Chomsky and Finkelstein, they can sideline and marginalise. In an effort to stay ‘on-side’ with them Horowitz loses his critical faculties and goes gaga over Israel.

And yet they appear to “ache the hate” so bad against Europa that they welcome their badly-behaved and violent Semitic cousins, their very own real enemy who they wish to destroy as Israel’s enemy yet welcome as “refugees” into the heartland of America. Are they planning a move that they haven’t told us about?

Maybe they are so wrapped up and taken in by their “infallibility” status within a European built society that they just can’t see the Aircraft laded with fuel heading for their very own “twin towers”

Why is a figure like Norman “infallibility” Podhoretz “mainstream Jewish” with the POWER and the MONEY and those who respond rationally to criticism always in a marginal position where they left wondering when and where the next pay check is coming from?

Posted by: Freddie Taylor on December 20, 2002 1:42 PM

Mr. Taylor is asking profound questions that I will attempt to answer in the not distant future. However, I’m not sure I’ll have an answer beyond what I said in the original post.

Posted by: Lawrence Auster on December 20, 2002 2:24 PM

Interesting essay.

You nail it here and there, but the hammer wanders, imho (my emphasis]:

“The liberal notion that “all bigotry is indivisible” implies that all manifestations of ingroup/outgroup feeling are essentially the same—and equally wrong. It denies the obvious fact that some outgroups are more different from the ingroup, and hence less assimilable, and hence more legitimately excluded, than other outgroups. “

LIBERAL is the key word. We’ll get back to it.

This is also an issue of time and place and experience. Catholics and Jews were regarded as unassimalatable (?) in earlier years, but [many -most?]] obviously went on to assimilate in spectacular fashion, to the benefit of America [ok, leaving out liberals of both [ALL] faiths.

“…means, for example, that wanting to exclude Muslim immigrants from America is as blameworthy as wanting to exclude Catholics or Jews. “

While Catholics and Jews, (I am sure) were early in scaring the daylights out of some people with labor unions et al, they were not TRULY religiously tied to a conspiracy to take over the world (despite what some believed and still proseltyze….)

Muslims in the 21st century, post 9/11 are certainly much more suspect. It’s not a forged “protocols” that tells they want us all to convert or die. Even if going by the “only 10% are islamicists,” it’s too dangerous to risk.

“Now when Jews [should be LIBERALS, MANY OF WHOSE LEADING SPOKESMEN ARE… - second waverings of the hammer] put together the idea that “any social prejudice or exclusion directed against Jews leads potentially to Auschwitz”….

“…We have identified the core Jewish conviction that makes Jews keep pushing relentlessly for mass immigration, even the mass immigration of their deadliest enemies. “…

BAM - throbbing red thumb. You have not identified a CORE JEWISH CONVICTION. Aside from the (what should be obvious) understanding that Liberal Jews-by-birth are so far away from ANY CORE JEWISH CONVICTIONS, you are ascribing to ALL Jews as a group a political failing that can equally be ascribed to liberal Methodists and other Liberal “Christian” groups who are equally in the forefront of open borders, “feel the pain of Osama” etc. Yet their fallacy is not ascribed to their faith, or their genetics or their culture, but merely to their politics.

One could make a case for their dilution and distortion of their faith, the same way we RW Religious Jews complain about LIBERAL JINO’s replacement of REAL traditional Jewish values with secular humanism and marxism, but either way , it’s not about JEWS it’s about moronic moral equivocating liberals, some of whom happen to have had Jewish mothers and eat in delis.

“In the thought-process of Jews, to keep Jew-hating Muslims out of America would feed exclusionary attitudes among America’s white gentile majority that could result in another Jewish Holocaust. “

No one likes unveiled threats. To threaten and/or exhort Pukechananites to push up the day of the rope because some JINO’s AS WELL AS [a higher % of] STUPID GENTILES [Hillary in Senate race in NY] voted democratic is the last way to get centrist Jews to move to the right.

According to Yehuda, the neoconservative Norman Podhoretz, a famous Jewish intellectual speaking as a Jew and describing the attitudes of himself and other Jews, is neither a Jew nor a neoconservative but a “liberal.” Non-observant Jews must only be referred to as mere “liberals,” never as Jews.

I’ve heard this argument before from some Jewish friends. I’m sorry, Yehuda, but I just don’t buy it.

On the question of the “core Jewish conviction,” I do not mean that ALL Jews share this core conviction, but that it seems to be a core conviction among a significant number of Jews.

Posted by: Lawrence Auster on December 24, 2002 3:04 AM

The last way to get Buchanan’s listeners to hear criticism of Buchanan is to call us names. Moreover, vulgarity in serious writing is not traditional.

Posted by: P Murgos on December 24, 2002 3:29 PM

Freddie Taylor asks:

“As a frank, intelligent and honest Jewish guy …”

I am a Jew by background, a Christian by religion. As such I have no standing to speak “for the Jews” or as a representative Jew. These are just my own observations.

” … does Lawrence Auster have any answers to the question of why characters like Norman Podhoretz can hold such ludicrous views that Jews in America (or Britain) are constantly at risk of being taken to Auschwitz and yet appear to be the most powerful and mainstream Jewish spokesman?”

As the events of the last year make abundantly clear, there is real anti-Semitism in the world, including active or passive support for people seeking to exterminate Jews. And this doesn’t just exist at the margins of society but at the center, e.g., the entire European establishment’s support and justification of Palestinian terrorists. So there are plenty of grounds for Jews and others to be fearful about a resurgence of serious anti-Semitism in the world. However, the unforgivable mistake made by many American Jews and liberals is to see America’s white gentile majority in those terms. They therefore try to suppress even the merest possibility of any normal act of cultural self-defense by that majority, seeing any such act as an expression of that majority’s true, “anti-Semitic” nature. Besides being wrong in itself, this attitude increases anti-Semitism.

“Why do P&Co appear to have such little understanding in the workings of a society like the U.S. or Britain that this can viewpoint can be put forward with any degree of seriousness? Why are they not laughed out of court?”

Because it fits with the general left-liberal view that Western white Christian society is evil, and that cultural aliens, such as Muslims, are good.

“Why are they such strangers to criticism of themselves that any questioning of the nature of Jewish power and its consequences for the U.S. is met with shrill abuse and what looks to an outsider remarkably like paranoia?”

They have general grounds for such fears, as I have said. But they fail to distinguish, even as a logical possibility, between genuine anti-Semitism and rational, legitimate criticism. However, one must also acknowledge that some individuals on the anti-Semitic right make a similar, if opposite, error. That is, they deny that any attack on Jews or on Israel is or can be anti-Semitic. I have seen people engage in relentless attacks on Israel’s legitimacy and rationalizations of terrorist bombers, and then, when they are called anti-Semitic, reply in wounded innocence that they are being called anti-Semites for merely “criticizing” Israel. So there is a real polarization that comes from both sides.

“What criticism would NOT qualify as anti-Semitism to them?”

A good question. It’s gone so far that Jews and liberals consider not just any criticism of Jews, but any concern about the cultural impact of non-European immigration, to be anti-Semitic. See my post, “Exchange with a neocon.”

“Have the powerful organized Jewish lobby become so immune to criticism that they now have an ‘antibody’ reaction where their ‘white corpuscle’ army crowds around and swallows the offender whole? Sobran, Francis, Gottfried (maybe Auster) and on the left Chomsky and Finkelstein, they can sideline and marginalize.”

I take exception to some of the names on Mr. Taylor’s list of supposedly innocent victims. Sobran, a talented writer, has shown virulently anti-Semitic attitudes in some of his articles and deserves much of the criticism he has received. Chomsky is an America-hating, Israel-hating, cosmic-conspiracy theorizing, leftist freak. I hope Mr. Taylor is not taking his side, since support by rightists for the likes of Chomsky would tend to validate Jews’ and liberals’ suspicions of genuine anti-Semitism on the right. Remember also that anti-Israelism on the left can be explained, at least partially, not as anti-Semitism per se but as anti-Westernism or pro-alienism—the left’s agenda to side with whomever they see as the “oppressed.” Such excuses obviously do not apply to the right. Rightist attacks on Israel’s legitimacy and rationalizations of Palestinian terrorism are expressions of anti-Semitism, pure and simple.

At the same time, the number of people on the right who have such Chomsky-esque views is still minimal. The overwhelming majority of American gentiles and conservatives are pro-Israel and/or philo-Semitic.

As for Sam Francis, I’m not aware of his ever being attacked as anti-Semitic, or of his ever saying anything anti-Semitic.

“Maybe they are so wrapped up and taken in by their ‘infallibility’ status within a European built society that they just can’t see the Aircraft laded with fuel heading for their very own ‘twin towers’”

I’m afraid there is something to this. Many American liberals and Jews actually seem to fear a virtually non-existent American anti-Semitism more than the actual murderous Jew-hatred of the Muslims who are being admitted into America though the immigration policy supported by those same liberals and Jews.

“… Norman ‘infallibility’ Podhoretz … “

Podhoretz in his authoritative declarations does seem at times like a self-appointed Pope.

Posted by: Lawrence Auster on December 26, 2002 3:18 PM

I don’t remember where this mentioned earlier, but it is true that all members of any social group have an obligation to protect the reputation of that group. If 1% or 99% of Jews have no convictions and are liberal nutcases, it is the responsibility of the righteous Jews to denounce the nutcases as much as possible. If they fail to do so, they risk a completely justified association. The Jews who do not denounce Jewish nutcases are as guilty of their comrades’ wrongdoings as any WW2-era German who simply turned his back, but did not necessarily participate in, the Holocaust. The same applies for any social, religious, whatever group.

Posted by: remus on December 27, 2002 2:12 AM

It’s impossible to conduct a debate around whether some notion or criticism is “anti-Semitic” or not because it is a charge that is meant to be debate terminating, debate avoiding. There is no dialectical process involved or intended because it is meant to stall and morally embarrass. It is a form of emotional blackmail to shut the critic up. Or else.
It is said for the same intention and purpose as that of charging “racism” and I mean “charge” quite specifically because it can have career ending outcomes as well as very real possibilities of politically inspired criminal connotations.
It is used cynically and manipulatively to avoid and prevent discussion on SUBSTANTIVE ISSUES. The originator of the charge is then driving the non- ‘debate’ down into an intellectual cul-de-sac: into whether something someone said is “anti-Semitic” or “racist”. What a totally useless and pointless waste of time and effort that is.
Thus the question of debate is turned away from whether those who represent organised specifically “jewish” pressure and opinion seem to deliberately set out to marginalise, or to sentence into non-person oblivion, to demonise and attack by any tactic or deliberate calculated smear those who dare publically criticise them. Criticism is inverted topsy-turvy fashion into questioning the motivation of that critic. The critic becomes a thought-crime suspect with whom the more careerist-minded are warned off from imitating or following. Or else.

I am a subscriber to Joe Sobran’s columns and find that Joe attacks those who misuse Jewish power to manipulate and abuse the democratic process and to diminish freedom not because they are Jews but because they are powerful people. His exposes those who are normally able to put “off-limits” a public discussion of their own power. He decries those who are so powerful that it is an offence to recognise and show to public gaze that power. Does he only do this only with Jewry? Jewry is prominent though certainly not exclusively highlighted because that is where the much power resides. And he has by his criticism been made to take the personal consequences of attempting to openly debate with that power.
He does the same with others who have appropriated power for their own politically-inspired ends like those in the State Security apparatus. His collection of essays they made into a book was exposing Clinton’s abuse of the process as well as those who helped maintain him in that position to “keep on abusin”.

The ” entire European Political Establishment….supports and justifies Palestinian Terrorism. I don’t think so Lawrence. The European political class is just trying to seek their own political and economic interests. This does not coincide with that of the Israelis and the power of the Jewish lobby is strong but not monopolistic. It is no coincidence though that in Britain, my own country, the political establishment is following the US and not the sceptical Europeans position. I am left wondering what special relationship this gives witness to.
You also seem to be forgetting what a bad time with economic sanctions and political exclusion and isolation the “European Political Establishment” gave Austria’s political class when Jorge Heider’s Freedom Party obtained enough votes to gain positions in a Right-wing coalition. I have not seen any “official class” sanctions against Sharon’s Israel.

My political education, as I grew from youth to adult, was much influenced by someone from on the British side of the conflict in Palestine who saw the effects of Jewish Terrorism at first hand. I do not see Jews exclusively as victims. They can be perpetrators and conscienceless fanatics too. It is not an exclusively Moslem/Palestinian thing in that conflict.

Posted by: Freddie Taylor on December 27, 2002 1:41 PM

In my previous comment I wrote: “However, one must also acknowledge that some individuals … deny that any attack on Jews or on Israel is or can be anti-Semitic.”

Plainly, this is Mr. Taylor’s position. According to Mr. Taylor, there is no act or speech that is or can be anti-Semitic. For him, as for an increasing number of people on the right, it is not a matter of clearly defining anti-Semitism and making distinctions between things that fit the definition and things that don’t. It is a matter of denying that any act or speech can be anti-Semitic. It is a matter of saying there is no such thing as anti-Semitism.

In my chapter on “The Meaning of Racism” in The Path to National Suicide, my purpose was to resist the use of the racism charge as a weapon to silence and intimidate people. I did this by accepting as my premise that there is such a thing as racism and that it is morally bad, and then I attempted to draw logical distinctions between things that can reasonably be called racist and things that cannot. While I haven’t written about anti-Semitism in the same detail, I am applying the same kind of analysis to it here as as I did to racism. Moreover, I’m willing to subject my own views and words to that analysis.

But Mr. Taylor is not willing to have his words and views subjected to such an analysis. He doesn’t want to define anti-Semitism in order to distinguish between things that are anti-Semitic and things that are not. Rather, he wants to ban the concept altogether, so that no acts or words can be ever called anti-Semitic.

Posted by: Lawrence Auster on December 27, 2002 2:41 PM

What I am trying to say Lawrence is that the concept of anti-Semitism as practised is an obstacle in the way of understanding what should be substantive issues under discussion. Dialogue should be without reference to a concept that has guilt for some and political advantage for others written all over it. It has become the proxy issue that is hi-jacked for the purpose of smearing opponents. You can only work with what something has become not what we would like it to be. It’s a label that in many cases does not accurately describe the goods contained though I grant that in some cases it does. Are there not other means to defeat an opponent of rationality other than to label or mislabel them such?

You attempted to engage a neocon in dialogue in your “Exchange with a neocon” but your heroic effort was ultimately futile. He was not interested in becoming involved in a dialectical process leading to a greater understanding of the issue. He isn’t interested. He prefers his smug and comfortable island of paranoia that he is used to. And he also calculates that he maintains a good living in providing what ”his’ people want, financial reinforcement being something that no one should underestimate.
Are people like me as deaf to “reason” in argument as the neocon?
I think not.
What should inform the debate?
It has as its purpose the blowing away of the fog that prevents a clear understanding of any clash of ideas. The neocon seeks both shelter from attack and a means to discredit by name-calling and labelling. I would want a frank and open discussion of the issues.

I am also very cynical about many people who talk about anti-Semitism and who would seem to practise its converse of, what I suppose could be called, “anti-gentilism ” without a trace of irony about what could be a presumed hypocrisy. I can see you are very aware of this facet of the neocon and liberal behaviour when you say, “They therefore try to suppress even the merest possibility of any normal act of cultural self-defense by that majority” in your December 26, 2002 03:18 PM post.

I think you see your position as somewhere “between the rock and the hard place” with both sides as equally deaf and unaware of appreciating the others fears. Currently though only one is seen and sensed as legitimate by those that have the power to propagandise such things. You may see a symmetry of misunderstanding but from where I’m sitting it’s pretty asymm.

On the question of being between a rock and a hard place and whether the two sides are equally at fault, I believe each side has genuine grievances against the other side. I also believe that each side has put itself deeply in the wrong. I further repeat that I see no way out of this deadly polarization except through a commitment to rational discourse in which we insist that words such as racism and anti-Semitism are given objective definitions which distinguish the truly immoral behaviors that such terms denote from other behaviors that are not immoral but are currently called such.

Neither side wants to engage in such an effort at present, because, for the mainstream establishment, it would mean that would have to be more restrained and discriminating in their use of the charges of “racism” and “anti-Semitism”; and for the right, it would mean recognizing that some of their own views and statements are, indeed, racist or anti-Semitic.

Samuel Johnson said that to think reasonably is to think morally. It follows that people often don’t want to think reasonably because they know it will lead them to moral conclusions that they won’t like.